Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/266

254 now be more numerous than it has become with, the assistance of immigration.

If we take the native white population of 5,745,348 in the year 1810 and give it an increase each succeeding decade of 34 per cent, with 28 per cent for the decade that included the civil war, we have for the year 1890 57,048,753, which is 3,064,863 in excess of the 54,983,890 total whites as given by the census of that year. In other words, the natives multiplying at less than their old rate would outnumber the present native and foreign white population by over three millions.

The rate of 28 per cent for the decade that included the civil war is lower than the rate of native increase during the Revolution, and the Revolution lasted seven years, while the civil war lasted only four. The rate of 34 per cent for the other decades is also quite conservative. For twenty years, when immigration was at a minimum, the natives had exceeded this rate, and as their rate was steadily rising there is every probability that they would soon have exceeded 35 per cent, and reached 36 or more before 1890. An average rate of 35 per cent, with 28 for the civil war, would have given 60,098,117 whites in 1890, which is 5,114,227 in excess of the total whites as reported by the census, and lacks only about two millions of equaling the whole aggregate population of black, white, Chinese, Japanese, and civilized Indians.

The estimates of Jeiferson and others by which they prophesied a great increase for the future were based on rates much higher than this. The country was new, with ample room for development, and growing more and more prosperous. European countries with dense populations and inferior natural resources have increased their rate within that time, and why should not the United States?

Some of these old countries increase their rate in spite of the fact that thousands of emigrants are leaving them every year. We have a new country, not half developed, with immigrants pouring into us, and yet our rate has been steadily falling for sixty years. Since 1830 the rate of increase of the whole aggregate population, black, white, Chinese, Japanese, and civilized Indians, together with all the immigrants that have been poured upon us and the accessions from the new territories, Louisiana, Florida, Texas, New Mexico, and California, has seldom been appreciably higher, and is in most cases considerably lower, than the old rate of increase of the native whites from 1750 to 1830, when immigration was at a minimum. All the immigrants and all their increase can not make up for the loss of the old rate of increase of the natives.

The following table shows that in only two decades, 1840 to 1850 and 1850 to 1860, was the rate of increase of the whole population higher than it had been among the natives alone before 1830. In